Binaural detection with narrowband and wideband reproducible noise maskers: II. Results for rabbit.

Abstract

Binaural detection with narrowband and wideband noise maskers was examined by using a Pavlovian-conditioned eyeblink response in rabbits. The target was a tone at 500 Hz, and the maskers were ten individual noise samples having one of two bandwidths, 200 Hz (410 Hz to 610 Hz) or 2900 Hz (100 Hz to 3 kHz). The narrowband noise maskers were created by filtering the wideband noise maskers such that the two sets of maskers had identical spectra in the 200-Hz frequency region surrounding the tone. The responses across the set of noise maskers were compared across bandwidths and across interaural configurations (N0S0 and N0S(pi)). Responses across the set of noise waveforms were not strongly correlated across bandwidths; this result is inconsistent with models for binaural detection that depend only upon the narrow band of energy centered at the frequency of the target tone. Responses were correlated across interaural configurations for the wideband masker condition, but not for the narrowband masker. All of these results were consistent with the companion study of human listeners [Evilsizer et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 111, 336-345 (2002)] and with the results of human studies of binaural detection that used only wideband [Gilkey et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 78, 1207-1219 (1985)] or narrowband [Isabelle and Colburn, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 89, 352-259 (1991)] individual noise maskers.